House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) reported that the president’s executive action on immigration would clean the slate for “the vast majority” of the 900,000 illegal immigrants who “are under deportation orders and have not appeared” on Wednesday’s “Morning in America.”
After he was asked “how many of these people in the shadows are criminals and are people who deserve high priority for deportation but maybe aren’t getting it?” Goodlatte responded “900,000 of them, Bill, are under deportation orders and have not appeared and the president’s executive order wipes that slate clean for the vast majority of those people. It does make it more difficult to deport even people who have committed serious crimes, defines that by a tougher standard. It makes it easier for the so-called sanctuary cities.”
He also reported “we had four Constitutional scholars, five if you count the fact that we have a three minute video of the President of the United States who has claimed for a long time to be a Constitutional Law scholar and showed some of the more than 20 instances where the president has said that he didn’t have the authority under the law and under the Constitution to make the changes that he subsequently made. But we also had four other individuals, all of whom say that we should be doing immigration reform…but three of the four testified that the president doing it unilaterally constitutes one of the largest unconstitutional power grabs by any president ever.”
Goodlatte further pointed out that the work permits given to illegal immigrants who are already working in the US would enable them to seek out other, higher-paying jobs and “Americans and lawful permanent residents in the United States are going to feel that pinch when suddenly our market starts getting flooded with 5 million new people who can take other jobs and then these jobs that are vacated by these folks they’ll be a magnet to bring in another wave of illegal immigration.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett